Monthly Archives: June 2014

Last week a friend visited, and I took her to a local Sculpture Park set within ten acres of heath and woodland, a place where meandering pathways lead you into a deep dream-scape of rare plants, springs, streams and ponds, and where artworks face you at every turn.

The evening before, over a meal in my garden, we shared stories – about ageing and loosing people, about war-damaged fathers, about writing workshops in prisons. Our discussions often home in on the suppressed feminine in both men and women. So it’s not surprising that while we wandered through the park our two pairs of eyes were resting longer on artworks expressing aspects of the feminine, and our observations mingled.

I thought I share a few photos of sculptures that caught our attention.

This bronze figure of an earth mother and warrior combined in one impressed. Her solid stance, yet also her surrender to something other. I took a picture and looked again, moved to touch her rough coat. There were her feet, standing firmly on the ground, a tool or weapon hanging from her belt, the little fists, speaking of determination, and there was her smooth, yielding face turned upwards in ecstasy towards a transcending spirit.

The endearing foursome forming a protective square made us linger.

My friend reached out to add her hand to the interlocking hands.

And we loved the little feet …

I felt a natural affinity with this bird woman, again taking a closer frame, to highlight her relationship to the bird.

It’s talons rest gently in her outstretched hand, bringing a greeting, and maybe a message.

The woman keeps a respectful space between her and the bird, a space filled with wonder, in which to savour the special meeting with her core nature.

A most haunting sculpture was this shell of a person. My friend reached into the dark emptiness. I called ‘Hello’ into the hollow and the sound was swallowed up without returning an affirming resonance.

Later, with the help of Photoshop, I turned the image into a negative, and there you have it – the essence of what we are, light, often hidden.

Day in day out we absorb a continuous hyper stream of phenomena. What makes us stop and observe more closely and choose a meaningful frame to digest our experience?

Is it an emotion, a sound, a movement, a desire to touch, an association, a memory, a pattern recognition, an inner seeing, the intuition of an essence, a context that resonates with our lives, an interesting angle, a certain light …?

For creatively inclined minds, these processes fuse and culminate in an urge to compose and share the impression of an experience by placing a frame round an image … a story.

A symbolic understanding arrives and signals once more into the unknown, framed anew.

Green hills come with grey skies. Endless weeks of rain leave me melancholic. Then I long for sunshine & hammock days, when fragrances of jasmine and honeysuckle linger until midnight, friends gather round a fire, tea-lights twinkle in trees, a glass of wine or two, or three. This year, sunshine flips to rain almost daily, green overwhelms as jungle that needs mowing, trimming and hedge-cutting. I’m left wondering if the rare sunny day is worth all the effort and contemplate a Mediterranean lifestyle.

Years back, after three months of filming in a desert – swift sunsets, brilliant stars, marvellous moons, scorching hot days, cool nights, stark and beautiful – I returned to a lush and sensuous Bavarian autumn – myriads of colours, the smell of moist earth, mist, the sweet water of ponds soft on my skin, different kinds of dreams – such a contrast, it made me think how powerfully our temperaments are influenced by climate and weather, in ways we experience ourselves, in ways we feel and think, in ways we express ourselves, write poetry, compose music.

Countries with balanced climate are rare, so it’s unreasonable to expect people to be balanced and temperate. And would it serve us, I wonder? Would it make us too complacent?

We’re not machines. Each of us has a unique frequency, intricately bonded and tuned with nature’s whorls and spirals in continuous movements of renewal and becoming. I concede, even a single balmy summer’s day brings a smile and restores my senses – blue flowers swaying in the breeze, reading poetry in my hammock.

So I dream of sunshine, but too zealously. As in Plato’s myth of Er, variety and extremes seem to turn the spindle of necessity and stimulate the imagination. What we commit to in life encounters grit – stuff that grows pearls in oysters and also polishes hearts. And there is the grace of precious moments, when seasons overlap in us, when all our senses are switched on, and the young, curious self, with its eternal projection into the unknown, imagines the unimaginable …

Engrossed in polishing the text of ‘Shapers,’ the latest idea for a post is as yet unwritten. To maintain my blogging rhythm, I thought I share another excerpt, leading on from … A taster of ‘Shapers’ …

* * *

The underground lake

Gart pondered the word he hadn’t come across – misgivings …

‘You see yourself in others as through a broken glass,’ said Rat, alert to his puzzlement.

‘Not in Mesa I don’t,’ Gart was quick to say. ‘And Leo, I despise him. I know how his mind works. I’m nothing to him. He used me to gain power in Rhonda.’

Rat shook its pelt and scuttled ahead into the tunnel. ‘Come along, you’ve got to cross the lake. There lies an answer.’

Gart struggled to his feet, limbs stiff from what seemed endless hours on damp rock. He recalled Oruba talking of a junction with a slab in the middle – and a password. ‘Not so fast!’ he shouted. Stumbling, he fell flat on his face. The glower shot from his hand and rolled yards ahead, a little spot of light before the blackness of the tunnel beyond. He touched his nose, wet – blood. There was no pain, only numbness.

‘Don’t fret. It’s useful to be visibly injured when you attempt to cross the lake.’ The silhouette of Rat loomed like a giant keyhole from where Gart was spread on the ground. ‘Not far now, hurry.’

Gart wiped at the trickling blood with his sleeve and then crawled towards his glower. Not far was an understatement. He followed the tail of his guide along three more junctions before a square slab signalled the gateway to the underground lake. Now where was the password? He sampled his pockets for the scrap of paper. ‘Lost it, must have happened when I fell.’

‘Didn’t you memorise the code?’ Rat sounded alarmed.

‘I only glanced at it.’

‘Try a few words, as they come.’

Gart shook his head. ‘It was short, that’s all I know.’

‘This place is dangerous to loiter in,’ Rat twittered. ‘I’ll race back to see if I can find the note. Your light may attract unsavoury entities. Turn it off! Whatever happens, don’t give in to fear!’

He did as told. In the blackness Rat’s last word echoed – fear – it came, consumed his reason, a snake. Kill it – kill it – he heard his own voice demanding. A blazing sword, not his, swished through the air and severed his right hand. Gart screamed and a thousand screams returned from the walls around him. Something shone in the darkness and slithered towards his lone hand. Voices murmured close to his ear, faces crowded in, concerned, until one face loomed over him, erasing all others. It was the menacing sneer again, the bane of his life. Gart coiled up and clutched his knees, whimpering, ‘Leave me. Go away.’

‘Must do, must do. Get on with it!’ Rat chased its own tail in frustration.

Gart pressed the password through his lips – Batin. A grating noise emitted from the slab as it slid apart.

Rat disappeared down steps hewn into the rock. ‘Quick. Not much time.’ The cavity below brought a whiff of cool air. An overhanging rock barred the way and Gart had to crouch low. He choked and his chest cramped in panic of being crushed. His muscles tightened, ungiving, like tough leather, and a stabbing pain in his shoulder made him cry out in pain. Fragments of a blurred shape drifted by, leaving a bitter smell, and then it was done. He stood upright. Taking a deep, long breath, Gart gaped at a cave towering high into a vast crystal vault. In the middle lay a body of water, motionless, like a sheet of glass. Tied to a jetty was a blue boat, and in it sat a hunched figure, a pale, wizened old man in rags that showed bits of brittle brocade. Too weak to raise his head, he turned his neck sidewise towards the presences and uttered a lament. ‘Have you come to lift the curse?’

It seemed impossible that this face terrified him earlier. The cruel dark eyes had changed into maudlin pools of tears. The sight disgusted Gart. Every fibre of his body twitched with a desire to drown the pitiful apparition.

‘I must leave you here, friend. Be careful now,’ said Rat.

* * *

I won’t give away the story, especially since the first book in the series still awaits the light of day. But I welcome feedback. Recent comments were precious gifts, thank you. All helps in the polishing.